Concrete Blonde to reunite at Regency

Johnette Napolitano sounds relaxed as she chats by phone from her home in Joshua Tree. The conversation is full of hearty laughs as she quickly jumps through a variety of topics, ranging from her undying love for Roxy Music to her passion for wine.

The vocalist claims she usually isn’t this calm in the days leading up to a major tour. Yet, she admits that she’s feeling comparatively carefree about Concrete Blonde’s upcoming reunion trek, which touches down at the Regency Ballroom in San Francisco on Saturday.

And Napolitano believes she knows exactly the reason why.

“This is the first tour that we’ve ever done where we didn’t have a record to promote,” says the 52-year-old Southern California native. “I mean, I’m nervous – but usually, I’m completely terrified. But I don’t feel that way.”

It’s been six years since Concrete Blonde had a new album to sell – 2004’s “Mojave,” which came out two years before the band officially went into yet another retirement phase. So, instead, Napolitano’s pioneering alt-rock trio – which also currently includes founding member/guitarist James Mankey and drummer Gabriel Ramirez, who first joined the ranks in 2002 – is reuniting to celebrate the 20th anniversary of its most acclaimed and commercially successfully album, 1990’s “Bloodletting.” Coinciding with the tour, the Shout! Factory label is releasing a remastered version of the record, complete with bonus tracks, on July 13.

Concrete Blonde’s reunion trek, dubbed “The Vampires Rise Summer 2010,” is the band’s most ambitious outing in ages. And it may turn out to be its most commercially successful as well. Concrete Blonde is definitely following a popular trend, where bands long past their commercial prime try to rekindle public interest by linking their tours to old hit records. Devo, Steely Dan, the Pixies and Echo & the Bunnymen are among the acts that have blazed this trail over the last 12 months, each finding substantial rewards at the gate.

“It’s easier to get paid now than it was then,” remarks Napolitano of all the veteran acts that are making comebacks. “These bands, if they are still around, are probably making more money now than they were making then.”

She also understands why fans are willing to pay to hear a band play the old stuff, when they are often reluctant to go see the same act if it’s touring in support of a new album.

“It’s a typical cycle. You find anyone that was young in the ‘50s and that’s the stuff they like,” says Napolitano, who adds that she recently ran into some people who were tremendously excited about going to see a few ‘80s acts. “Nobody wants to get old. That’s the music that makes them remember the ‘80s and before they had their kids and they could stay up all night – the `best-days-of-their-lives’ kind of thing.”

“Bloodletting” is certainly an album worth remembering, both for the fans and the band.

Concrete Blonde was at a crucial point in its career when it went into the studio in August 1989 to begin recording its third record. Its previous two outings, 1986’s eponymous debut and 1989’s “Free,” had performed well, but the band’s label, I.R.S., was still looking for that commercial breakout.

The third time proved to be the charm. Released in May 1990, “Bloodletting” went on to achieve gold certification (noting sales of 500,000 plus) and produce two Top 40 Modern Rock singles, “Caroline” and “Joey,” the latter of which soared all the way to No. 1. Other album cuts, including “Bloodletting (The Vampire Song)” and “Tomorrow, Wendy,” would become all-time fan favorites.

Yet, “Bloodletting” is also an effort of extreme historical importance, one that defines its particular year of release at least as well as any other record. Listen to the album today – which Concrete Blonde fans still do, in an obsessive and worshipful manner – and it seems to map out the crossroads where popular music resided at the turn of that decade. For “Bloodletting” is a work equally built on the old (the pop-metal of the ‘80s) and the new (the alt-rock revolution that blossomed in ‘90s), and it blends the two eras convincingly well.

Concrete Blonde would go on to release two other studio albums before breaking up in 1995 – and three more during its short-lived reunions in 1997 and 2001-2004. Napolitano also put out records with other ensembles and under her own name. To date, however, no other work in her catalog has managed to strike the same reaction from listeners as “Bloodletting.”

That used to confound Napolitano, who initially believed that tracks like “Joey” were too personal for the general public to embrace.

“I thought, for sure, it was too personal a record for anyone to get behind,” she says. “The greatest lesson that I learned from that record is that the more open and honest and raw you are as a writer, or as an artist, you will find that everyone has gone through, or will go through, the same thing that you have.

“When you think you’re the only one, that’s when you’ll discover, no, everyone is in the same bag.”

Jim Harrington

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According to Ticketmaster and my tickets. the concert is June26 not this Saturday

Kibosh

Hey Jim, great to hear the Concrete Blonde is back. Did you know that James Mankey and his brother Earl were in the original LA-based version of SPARKS, before the other brothers in the band, Ron and Russell Mael went to the UK in 1974 for fame and fortune. Did James have any stories from those days?

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